BasicMicro - Forums

Here is WIP V14. There was some cleanup and add a few more commands. IF...THEN...ELSEIF...ELSE...ENDIF and FOR...NEXT.

Next week I think this will actually replace the existing manual. Probably after I get SERIN / SEROUT done.

WIP v15. Math section complete. Modifier section started.

V17 is now available.

Changes:
1. Alphabeticaly sorted most of the commands.
2. LCD commands.
3. Freqout.
4. Modifiers complete.

This has slowed down to a snails crawl. About 1 to maybe 1/2 command a day. The old manual is too far behind to really use anything from it. So all the latest work is from scratch. I think its time to remove all referrence and links to the old manual and update them with this one.

Today I greatly expanded the IF..THEN else to be more descriptive. Few more commands were added. Going to wait until SERIN / SEROUT are included before the next release. Thinking some time middle of next week since these 2 commands will probably take about 2 to 3 days to explain well.

Also the reason I'm posting the works in progress is I want anyone reading it to let me know if there is something that doesnt make sense or needs to be explained better. The point of this manual isn't just syntax reference but a teaching aid as well.

Sometimes it's hard to do both in a single document.

Alan KM6VV

Something in between syntax and teaching. Think bs2 manual. Sometimes I just drop a command in there and really don't explain much about it. IF..THEN as an example. I went back and re-wrote that to make more sense. Technically I barely understood it at first

Sometimes you can write a "master program", and continuously refer to various lines in it for your manual examples. In some tutorial manuals, the user actually "writes" a program, adding bits to it as things are learned.

This program could also be used for "testing" various BasicAtom releases. It would demonstrate all the various commands.

Or maybe a suite of tests (I'll bet you have). The compiler would be expected to compile all the files of the suite without errors, and generate (where applicable) known values that can be checked. But I'll bet you knew all that...

An abstract of the suite could be a useful reference for a manual.

Just thoughts.

Alan KM6VV

How is this coming along? These commands as well as the HSERIAL and HSERVO commands including the new Arc32 commands are the ones I have been hoping to see in the manual as these are commands that differentiate you from other things like the stamp.


I totally appreciate that the WIP is posted and as you know I try to review as you go along. I have been waiting for some of the above mentioned commands to be done before I do another pass.

It would be great if you could soon get it to a point that you feel comfortable in installing the new document with each release of the IDE. But to do so, you probably need to at least have rudimentary coverage of all of the commands as well as module pin outs and interrupts.. . You might consider adding in pages for each of the remaining commands and the like and maybe do a cut and paste from the old document, with something like red text at the top that says that this data may be out of date and will be updated...

As has been mentioned, it is a hard task to get one document that works well as a reference as well as teach the basics. I totally understand and appreciate for example that you have sorted the commands alphabetically, for me that helps. But for teaching that can be a hindrance. For example you have the Exception command to handle the case where you need to get out of a gosub without returning to where it was called from. That is great, but unless you know about it, you may not know to look for it. Hopefully you will have an index(bookmarks), plus maybe do something like BS and have summary pages that show all of the commands in alphabetical order as well as summary pages that show all of the commands by a logical breakdown...

Again I am glad to see that this is being done.

Kurt

I'm committed to this 100%. It was just more work than I thought. So progress slow. But I do agree don't waste too much time until I mark it beta.

Had some new products we are wrapping up for the ARC32 and the robots. So middle of this week will be back on manual. My first stop is TOC and Index. Once thats done we will add it to IDE.

Hi Dale,

I was taking another quick pass through V17 of the manual. In particular since you mentioned modifiers were done I thought I would take a read through.

Unless I am missing it, I think a major piece of the modifier functionality is not discussed in this section. That is the part where you can specify the min and max size for the modifiers. From the old document you have:


I often use the size field for output to things like LCDS or sometimes just for debug outputs, when I want a bunch of outputs to line up.

One thing I have found that was not covered in the old PDF manual is that the when you are doing something like: sdec5 MyVar\5
The size fields do not include whether the sign indicator is output as part of it's size. That is if MyVar has a value of -1, then the output would be -00001, so for example in my remote control code where I want things to line up, I have to special case and test to to see if the number is negative or not and when positive output a leading blank...

I hope that makes sense.

Kurt

I'll have Nathan take a look at it and I'll get it added. Here is the wip18 with a TOC. Its not done and the new color cover was just messing around. I started place holders for all items missing. I have a few more place holders to add. After which I will get the base commands finished first before replacing the old manual.

You say the "discussion list" is at basicmicro.com.
Isn't that the forum? Shouldn't that be http:\\forum.basicmicro.net?
kenjj

forums.basicmicro.com actually. The .net is just a redirect I believe.

Also, Kurt is correct. Al the DEC,HEX and BIN modifiers(used for input or output) support a maximum character number. So DEC1,DEC2,DEC3,DEC4 etc...

The maximum characters number ranges are:

DEC1 to DEC9
HEX1 to HEX8
BIN1 to BIN32

The signed and indicated varients also support the maximum characters number as well.

When used in OUTPUT commands like SEROUT these modifiers*including the signed and indicated varients) also support minimum characters to send. The format is:

DEC value\# where number is the same range as the maximum characters number range.

You can also use them at the same time. For example if you want to always output 4 digits of a number, no more and no less you would use this modifier:

DEC4 value\4

Note that the sign and indicator are not counted toward the maximum or minimum characters. For example if you output a max and min of 4 characters with negative value you will get the "-" plus 4 digits.

Per Kurt suggestion I went ahead and added all the place holders I could think of including missing commands. I cleaned up the TOC and added a beta front cover. By beta not sure I'm settled on the image I choose so I didnt buy the rights to it yet.

At any rate, go through the manual and see if there is any sections I'm missing in regards to place holders. This seems to be the best way to know whats left and for users to know where we are really at.

I'll be waiting on comments

This is just the cover. But I think I settled on an updated look instead of something totally new.